Anthony Rose confirms Project Canvas for 2011

2010 release date now a distant memory

Anthony Rose, CTO of Project Canvas, has confirmed that the IPTV service will not be coming at in 2010 as originally thought.

Speaking at Intel's Shaping the Future of TV conference in London, with TechRadar in attendance, Rose outlined what Project Canvas is all about and revealed that we should see the service in the UK in the "first half of 2011".

When asked what the priorities for Canvas were now that it had been given the go ahead by the BBC Trust, Rose said: "The priority for Canvas is to start building the sucker.

"To get all our partners together was a remarkable feat, but now we have a great amount of work to do on the technology of the service."

When prompted about a UK release date for Project Canvas set-top boxes, Rose explained: "I'm not sure what timescale was said before I joined, but we should be looking at now is the first half of 2011 for Project Canvas."

iPlayer evolved

Rose is no stranger to web TV. Back in 2007 he was made Head of Digital Media Technology for the BBC, where he was put in charge in updating the iPlayer.

In March of this year, Rose took on the role of Project Canvas, a service which he explained was "a great proposition".

"Canvas is the next evolution from iPlayer. It is an open platform that uses the latest processers and bitrate technologies to make the best service," he noted.

"It's an open platform and that means anyone can come up with something for the platform."

"If you make it closed, then only you can provide innovation. When it's open, other people can collaborate to the success of the platform and come up with applications that you've never even dreamed of.